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Mar 2023
5:32pm, 8 Mar 2023
8,567 posts
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DoricQuine
Higher (A Level) French in 1973 and Advanced French for Business as part of HND Business Management for Travel & Tourism in !984 as a mature student.
Still reasonably fluent and could hold my own on our frequent visits to Paris since then, which often got us better tables in restaurants and more attentive service!
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Mar 2023
5:52pm, 8 Mar 2023
28,282 posts
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Rosehip
I also remember that one of our French teachers, who was French, had quite a potty mouth under her breath - which those of us whose vocabularies had been enhanced by having French exchange guests and penfriends could recognise and laugh at 
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Mar 2023
5:59pm, 8 Mar 2023
11,141 posts
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sallykate
A in O level French in 1984 (no memory of the stories thing) but when I moved to France in 1994 it was immediately obvious that I knew nothing useful (like how to understand French people when they speak in "real life" as opposed to a tape).
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Mar 2023
7:21pm, 8 Mar 2023
49,120 posts
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♪♫ Synge ♪♫
Ah! The Harrap’s Dictionary of French Slang in the school library. A source of much happy entertainment. Oh how we sniggered!
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Mar 2023
8:59pm, 8 Mar 2023
37,812 posts
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LazyDaisy
French O level grade 1 in 1970 (which was the top in those days, 9 being the bottom unlike now) , A at A level in 1972, and I remember nothing whatsoever of the French text books. German, however, which I also did: the Deutsches Leben textbook, und die Familie Wagner, are engraved on my heart. The German mistress was fearsome
I do remember being taken aback when I did my PGCE in MFL in the mid-noughties at the extraordinary simplification of the syllabus compared to my experience as a teen.
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Mar 2023
10:18pm, 8 Mar 2023
22,318 posts
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ChrisHB
I did Deutches Leben; we also had a grammar book in gothic script! Once we'd been told it was actually quite easy to learn to read it, we indeed found it quite easy to learn.
My father had Deutches Leben in gothic when he was at the same school in the late 1930s - I wonder if the school dropped German with the outbreak of the war.
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Mar 2023
10:51pm, 8 Mar 2023
444 posts
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shyfire
Scottish O'Grade(1) then picked up Higher French(A) in sixth year in the late 80s. Very hazy recollection of the textbooks but all followed the same family from 1st year on. All I remember is everyone seemed to live in Creteil which didn't sound like a very nice place. Had to listen to a lot of listening comprehensions to get ear tuned, was always better at translating from French into English and wrote a lot of tosh about hang gliding, skiing, hot air ballooning and all manner of activities just to use the words! For higher we had to read a couple of novels as set text - one was a Maigret, the other some contemporary 'young adult' fiction about a girl in Creteil (again!) - only thing I remember was she had a much older boyfriend and it was all a bit cringey.
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Mar 2023
11:12pm, 8 Mar 2023
17,487 posts
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JK *chameleon*
Bonjour! Et aussi Guten Tag.
GCSE French and German in 1998, then A-Level German.
At GCSE I learned important things such as what I have in my pencil case, and that I have a pet (I didn't), and my German teacher was furious the one day none of us could remember whether Meerschweinchen was masculine, feminine or neuter. And I learned that un quart d'heure de coiffeur was the French equivalent of being fashionably late.
At A-Level I read the diary of Anne Frank auf Deutsch, and did a module entitled Ausländer Raus!, where I learned about asylum seekers in Germany. It was a huge step up from GCSE, and I struggled to a D, meaning I couldn't follow it up at university.
I'd love to pick German back up, but without a reason to use it I'm not sure it would stick now I'm in my 40s.
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Mar 2023
7:31am, 9 Mar 2023
17,167 posts
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Garfield
I grew up in Canada and lived on the border with Quebec, so we started early with basic French, then in middle school, I did a part immersion taking one subject (Canadian History) in French for two years, then continued with French through high school until I graduated. In university, one of my courses was bilingual - one week in English, one week in French.
When holidaying in France years ago, I used to find Agatha Christie books in French and buy them as brain teasers and to give myself a refresher in French.
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Mar 2023
4:04pm, 9 Mar 2023
18,491 posts
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Cerrertonia
We had the Marsaud family. Voice la famille Marsaud. M. Marsaud est le père de la famille. Mme Marsaud est la mère de la famille etc. Monsieur Marsaud was always dans le jardin and his wife dans la cuisine. The son was called Jean-Paul and the girls were Claudette and (I think) Marie-France plus Bruno the dog.
It must have been reasonably widespread in English schools because Eddie Izzard did a routine about "le singe est dans l'arbre" and that was one of the early lessons on the course.
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